Archives for category: Family

Making time

May 15, 2014 //

As I mentioned in The Hours, taking care of myself as a breast cancer patient is time consuming. For example, I still need 10-12 hours of sleep per night. I walk an hour to an hour and a half nearly every day. My wheat allergy coupled with the diet I eat to help maintain good health means that I eat very little prepared or processed food. Cooking from scratch takes time. I still find myself in health providers offices 2-3 times per week. And I work for a living. Right now, I bill about 18 hours per week. Twenty hours per week is considered full-time for a private practice psychologist. I used to bill nearly twice that much but admittedly, that was pretty unhealthy. The way I explained it to my husband was, “Imagine that you lost four hours of every work day and had 2-3 doctors’ appointments every week.”

And it’s not just trying to find time for work. It’s trying to find time for a social life, to spend time with my husband, and to spend time with my daughter. I have been looking at what I can give up to free up my time. There are some things like blogging and walking that take time but I will not give them up. My blog writing ebbs and flows in frequency. When I have a lot of ideas, it is because I have a lot on my mind to process and it is helpful to write about it.

I stopped seeing my naturopathic oncologist several months ago. I follow continue to follow her recommendations. We had transitioned to a maintenance schedule, anyway. I was also on a maintenance schedule with my acupuncture appointments. I was getting them every three weeks, traveling to a different city to get them. I told her I wanted to see if things continue to go well and check back with her as needed. I have decided that I am done with reconstruction and have no scheduled appointments with my surgeon. This means that I have scaled back to medical oncology appointments every three months, onco-surgery follow-ups every six months, massage every three weeks (I have been doing that for 13 years to manage chronic pain and stress issues), an annual mammogram, an annual MRI, a yearly physical with my internist (I am now one month overdue), psychologist visits every 2-4 weeks, and a trip to the dentist twice per year. I am still figuring out how to work in a dermatology visit as well as a trip to the eye doctor.

I have also opened up more work time by working on the weekends. I don’t work more than an hour or two each day but I don’t really like to do that. Due to logistics, cutting back a little on my practice means cutting back too much, due to the number of hours each of my testing patients requires. So I’m stuck between working a little less than I want to, which is boring and strapping us for cash or to work a little more than I’d like to. I talked to my husband earlier in the week and told him that I wanted to try to build a week off into my schedule every quarter. Because he is awesome, he quickly told me that he thought it was a wonderful idea. So, I’ve already taken off a week for New Orleans and have a vacation coming up in the summer.

I am so grateful to have flexibility in working all of this out and I will keep working on it since my energy level and responsibilities are still somewhat of a moving target.

Tags Breast Cancer, family work balance, self care, time management

Categories Breast cancer, Family, Parenting

Coasting

May 13, 2014 //

When I was a girl, my younger brother, Jim frequently rode our bikes. I remember the pumping my legs furiously so that I could coast along for awhile without having to do anything to propel myself. It was exhilarating going down hills and on the flat, it created joyful stretches of ease, moments of effortlessness.

Being a healthy person, having a healthy marriage, and being a good parent are all “works in progress”. When John and I saw a psychologist for marital therapy years ago prompted by family planning issues, I asked her sincerely, “When is the time when we get to coast in marriage?” She promptly responded, “Never.” I remember my shock at her response at the time. It’s kind of funny looking back at my thoughts at that time. I do know that I was quite overwhelmed by my life and about to enter my second episode of major depression. It was a fantasy I had that after all of the hard work I had done in my life, that I would be able to coast. I would have an easy time as a wife, parenting would get easy.

I was reminded of my wish to coast recently when I realized that after all of my hard work, I had strayed off of Weightwatchers and begun to gain weight. I didn’t gain a lot of weight and I’ve started losing again. It may not seem to be a big deal to you but I have gained and lost weight many times since I was 14 years old. And as I have mentioned, the last two periods of weight gain had put me into the clinically obese range. My breast cancer was highly responsive to estrogen and progesterone. Our adipose tissue (fat and other stuff) has glandular function and increases female hormone production. I know it is important for me to exercise and eat right. I am very lucky to not have physical issues that would interfere with my ability to exercise and to have a life situation that makes it possible for me to work part time. But even knowing these things, my weight has crept up in the past when I stopped paying attention to my habits, when I tried to coast in my life.

I have lived a good bit of my life working at capacity and feeling fairly stressed out. At these times, I have thoughts like, “It will be SO much easier, when ____________” This blank has been completed in many different ways over the years, “when I finish school”, “after the baby starts sleeping through the night”, “after my career is established”, “after my daughter is grown”, “when my husband’s job situation improves”, “after my cancer treatment is done”, “after my energy returns”, “after I start working full time again.”

But the truth of the matter is that although stress ebbs and flows throughout out lives, we are never done with it. And there are always unknowns and unexpected challenges that loom on the horizon.

In my work, I specialize in what for most children are chronic difficulties. And although many of them have loving and very skilled parents, even the most loving and skilled of the parents gets exhausted with the extra work their child or children require. There is also a period of adjustment after diagnosis that can take anywhere from weeks to more regularly, years, and sometimes, never. It is the adjustment to the idea that there will be no coasting as a parent and that one’s children will likely need more support and over a longer number of years, than other children.

I sometimes use an analogy with parents. I tell them, “Raising a child with these challenges is like running a marathon of unknown length and unpredictable terrain, with uphill, downhill, and stretches of flat. It is important to take the cups of water whenever you can.”

If I really think about it, coasting on a bike only lasted so long before I either had to brake because I was going too fast or start pumping my legs again so I could keep going. I have been working hard to take care of myself but also to nurture my relationships and carry out my responsibilities. I will keep working on the rhythm of knowing when to pump and when I can coast so I can keep moving forward and maintain my balance. And if if that little cup of water looks too small to last a lifetime, I will take them when they are offered.

Tags Breast Cancer, mindfulness, Parenting, parenting children with special needs, self care, stress, work/life balance

Categories Breast cancer, Family, Mindfulness, Parenting

Empty

May 10, 2014 //

I was walking through the woods and I noticed her out of the corner of my eye. I snapped some photos using my phone and I memorized her location.

A humming bird sitting on her nest! I was thrilled! I ordered a real camera to take better nature photos. And the next day, I found this.

An egg! The tiniest egg you could ever imagine. A tiny little package of life.

This was the only view I got of the egg. Here’s a little video of the time she was kind of peeved with me for getting too close to her.

After a couple of days she seemed to get used to me. And she sat on that little egg, day after day. I was thrilled to have a chance to see the miracle of life in the nearby woods. Hummingbirds are small and feisty. And this mama, despite the fact that she has the brain the size of a pea, had the instinct to protect her baby. She knew how to fly around to make herself look larger and to make lots of noise. And she also knew when it was time to quell her own instinct to flee and to stay sitting on that egg.

This is a photo I took on a very rainy day. She sat there with the rain dripping on her head from the little twig above her. I thought it was a good metaphor for a mama’s love.

Every day or two, I visited the nest. I had done a little research on hummingbirds and learned that the gestation time would be 16-18 days for the egg to hatch. So, not knowing how recently she had laid her egg when I first found her, I expected to see a chick within a couple of weeks. I kept visiting and started feeling a little impatient because day after day, there was no chick.

Then I went to New Orleans for a few days. John and I walked back into the woods the day after our return.

Still no sign of the chick! It is possible that there was a chick under mama but it had been far longer than 16-18 days! Rip off! Where’s my miracle? Isn’t this a zoo?

Then it happened! A chick, a chick, a chick!!!!!!

I visited the chick a couple of times. I was planning to keep taking photos of the chick’s growth, the increase in feathers, and how little bird get loud and demanding as they await food from mamas who are scurrying around to get food for a baby who grows to her size.

Today, John and I set out for the woods. It was a breathtakingly beautiful Seattle spring day.

Nothing. Empty. That chick was still small and homely two days ago. Sometimes nests are empty because a chick has gotten strong and fledged. But other times, they are eaten by a predator or fall from the nest. This chick, whom I’d affectionately called my “grand baby” and who my Facebook friends had fussed over, is dead.

I had been saving my photos for a post on this blog. This is not the post I had in mind. But life is still a miracle and this Mama did her best, as we all do with our children to help them be strong enough to leave us.

Mothers’ Day is typically a very happy day for me. I have a close relationship with my mother, who is a healthy woman. I have a wonderful daughter. But I know that it is a day of loss for many. For those of you who have lost your mothers, who have lost your children, or who wished for children who were never to be, Mothers’ Day has a much different meaning. And then there are those of us who are mothers who understand that we can’t take our own health for granted. We pray that we will be there for our children as long as we can, especially while they are still chicks in the nest.

Life is full of mixed feelings. I hope that at least one of the feelings you experience tomorrow is serenity. If you are a mom who has lost a child, I know you worked to love and protect your children. If you are a daughter who has lost a mother, I know you brought moments of great joy into your mother’s life just by being her child. If you wanted children but it was not meant to be, think of all of the children to whom you have mattered by being a nurturing presence.

Tags loss, Mothers' Day, Nature, Parenting, rufous hummingbird

Categories Family, Flora and Fauna, Mindfulness, Parenting

Artsy, colorful, and a little dirty

May 7, 2014 //

Yes, I know I’m posting a lot recently. And I’m still not caught up with my posts for New Orleans!

As you know, I would like my house to be much cleaner and better organized. I have been focusing on the fact that I live with very messy people. Although this is true, I also realize that I am railing against the consequences of my reduced stamina and the fact that I have to sleep a lot. I just don’t have the number of work hours available in a day that I used to have. So, I’ve been doing less cleaning and organizing myself. And my husband has had to pick up a great deal of the parenting load.

Today, I had a thought. “My house is artsy, colorful, and a little dirty.”

For some reason, that does not sound so bad. The “little dirty” is perhaps a minimization but I could argue that it’s only “a little dirty” because outside of my daughter’s room, a snow shovel is not a required cleaning tool.

An “artsy, colorful, and a little bit dirty” house actually sounds like fun. A good house for a get together where you don’t have to remember to raise your pinky when you sip your tea.

I am going to try out this little re-frame and see how it goes.

Categories Breast cancer, Family

The Other Superbowl

February 3, 2014 //

As most of you are aware, the Superbowl was played yesterday. It was the 48th Superbowl but only the second one in which my hometown team, the Seattle Seahawks, played. They played against the Denver Broncos, who in contrast, have been to the Superbowl seven times, having won in both 1997 and 1998.

I used to be an avid sports fan. I watched all kinds of sports including Monday Night Football. I lost interest in football after college, I must admit. The fact that my husband knows and cares less about team sports than I do (with the exception of the Oakland A’s as he still speaks fondly of attending the World Series with his late father in ’72, ’73, and ’74), made it easy for me to stop watching. And I know that a lot of people disagree with me but I also stopped following football because it’s a brutal sport. It’s just not safe and we get young kids to do it.

Yesterday, though, I put my concerns aside and watched the game. It was really exciting. But the game wasn’t close at all. The Seahawks dominated from the very first play. The Broncos made a lot of mistakes from the very first play, giving two points to the Seahawks on a safety only twelve seconds into the game. A safety is a weird little way that the defense can score. In other words, our team scored without ever having position of the ball. That kind of start off to the game had to have been pretty discouraging for the Broncos.

The Broncos really didn’t ever recover and the looks on the players faces just got more and more defeated. Yes, they are totally overpaid and what they do is grossly overvalued by our culture. And their humiliation is not akin to the pain of starving to death. But the pain was real and I felt sad for them. When I played softball as a kid, my team was never any good. I remember we once got incredibly routed. It was incredibly frustrated. I was mad and just wanted the game to end. But I also had a job to do so I kept trying to do my best through the entire game. The Broncos didn’t stop playing. They probably didn’t play as well as they would have otherwise but they kept playing until the end.

There was another super bowl lost over the weekend. It was a loss of a literal bowl. I accidentally broke my yellow 4 quart Pyrex mixing bowl.

There it is in shards. It was an ordinary mixing bowl but it was a super bowl, nonetheless. It originally belonged to my grandmother MacKenzie, my dad’s mom. I never met her as she died in 1957, before I was born. She was a child of German immigrants who lived in the Midwest, Chicago and then later in St. Paul, MN. She had four children, three of whom survived past infancy and were born in three different decades, Bill in the teens, Helen in the 20’s, and my dad in 1932. By 1940, my grandmother had lost both an infant son and her husband. The mixing bowl is a bit big for cake making so I typically think of her having made yeast breads in it. It is the perfect size for proofing dough. Or perhaps she made apple strudel. I know that she was fluent in both English and German but when I’ve asked my dad whether she made German food he says, “She just made regular food.” She sounded like a very interesting woman. In addition to raising three children and becoming a widow during WWII, she worked for the Veteran’s Administration. She was also known on bitterly cold Chicago winter days to invite the African American postal carrier inside to warm up and eat a bowl of soup. This was in the 1940’s. I think this showed a great deal of class. My dad is a very fair person and it sounds like his mom was, too.

My mother inherited this bowl before I was born. She used it to make bread and cakes. And yes, I said that it was too big for cake but not too big for the cakes that my mom made for our family of eight. I remember the sweet and yeasty smells that the bowl contained. I licked leftover cake and cookie batter out of that bowl. When I married, my mom gave the bowl to me and I have had it in my kitchen for nearly 24 years.

My mom did not give me the bowl because I am the only daughter in the family. It wasn’t because it was something traditionally feminine. She gave me the bowl for the special significance it holds in my life. I was a premature baby. I stayed in the hospital for some time but even by the time I was taken home, I was too small to bathe in an infant tub.

Mom bathed me in that yellow Pyrex bowl until I was big enough for a regular tub. I broke a family heirloom. It has made it through multiple cross country moves. On Saturday I was trying to separate it from a larger bowl in which it was nested within the cabinet and it dropped to the floor. It wasn’t a long drop. I can be clumsy in the kitchen because I move too quickly. I have to believe that I’ve dropped that bowl many times before.

The bowl fragments will go out with the trash tomorrow and end up in a landfill. It’s cliche to say but it is true that the memories will live on. And not just the memories of three generations of cooks but the shared memories of mothers who have nurtured their families with food and with physical care taking. And as our culture has changed, we have more men who understand the meditative aspects of baking as well as the feel and smell of a baby when you take her out of the tub to dry off. She’s wet but you hold her to your chest and rub her with a towel. You feel the warm water seeping into your clothes and you smell Johnson and Johnson’s Baby Shampoo.

We win and we lose. We struggle and thrive. We build things and break things. We will continue to care for each other.

Tags babies, Family, family heirlooms, mothers, Superbowl

Categories Family, Feelings, Parenting

Protected: Declaration of Dependence

January 28, 2014 //

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Categories Family, Feelings, Marriage, Mindfulness

Rewinding and Reconnecting

December 31, 2013 //

Yesterday, I was reading through my posts for 2013 as a review. I’d had a good and productive day. I was happy all day. And then I came to my post from August when I was hit with grief over the anniversaries of my mastectomy as well as the death of my friend, Gina. I remember that day in August. I cried for hours, which is something I have done less than a handful of times in my life outside of the two times I had clinical depression.

Yesterday I cried for about 20 minutes and then I actually felt good again. I’m not one of those people who usually feels better after crying. I mean I know that it is necessary to express grief but I still usually feel exhausted and cotton headed after I cry. The grief startled me because I found instantly found myself loudly and sloppily crying. The intensity of my grief felt like the day Gina died. And my worries about my own mortality, especially the prospect of dying before my daughter is grown, only intensified it.

I’m of the opinion that life is complex and there’s usually not one reason why something happens. But I will say that viewing a series of black and white photos of a husband and wife over the course of the wife’s treatment and later death from breast cancer, likely was a catalyst for this latest crying jag. One of the photos is a head shot of the pair in bed, holding each other, each with a look of utter bliss. It’s a beautiful and happy image. And it reminds me of my husband and I. John is a very affectionate man. He hugs me in his sleep and if I awaken in the middle of the night and put my arm around him, he makes a sigh of contentment and holds my hand. And I don’t mean that he sometimes does this. He always reaches for my hand, every time over the past 23 years. So I looked at that photo and immediately inserted myself into the image. And this woman who was born in the 70’s died. And you can see the progression of her illness in the photos with each photo showing loves and losses in the most poignant way. I found myself thinking, “That could have been me. That still could be me.” I didn’t dwell on the thoughts but I had them nonetheless.

I had nightmares that night. (People, when you wonder why I am careful about watching intense, violent, and/or scary films. This is why. They have given me nightmares since I was about 6 years old.) In one, I was at a parade that included some past beauty queens, women who were now middle-aged. They were beautifully dressed but instead of being on a parade float, they were lying in open caskets on wheels! Even in the dream I thought, “What on Earth? What is this supposed to symbolize about women, beauty, and aging?” And then later in the dream, I was at the funeral of a relative. I don’t remember anything except she was a woman in my family. I remember having grief during the dream about missing my grandmother who died in 1993. In the final part of the dream, my daughter was acting completely and utterly out of control. As rebellious and angry as she could be. It was terrifying.

I am a genuinely happy person. One who has been through a lot. And lots of people have been through a lot in their lives with different impacts and different ways of coping. I am a person who feels things deeply but I am also a deep thinker. And I feel both positive and negative emotions as well as having positive and negative thoughts. I feel happy and calm most of the time. I think part of these intense moments I have of sadness and fear come from the enormity of what I have to lose, my family, my friends, my independence, my capacity to help others as a psychologist.

Today’s New Year’s Eve resolution is to remind myself of the strength of my connections, my connections to myself through my own self-awareness and the purposeful way in which I try to lead my life. My connection to my daughter who is doing so well and so happy right now. My connection to my husband who loves me so dearly that he reaches out to me even when he is fast asleep. Who trusts me so deeply that he allows me to be very open about the ups and downs of our relationship as well as our own personal shortcomings. My connection to my parents; I can’t imagine how hard it must be as older people, to worry about your child’s health and mortality. When my friend, Preben got cancer over five years ago, while still in his 30’s, I noticed that his parents started visiting him much more frequently. I told him half jokingly, “That’s what you get for getting cancer and scaring your parents.” My connections with my extended family have also strengthened. I have some wonderful cousins and sister-in-laws and my brothers have actually nudged themselves out of their comfort zone a little to be a bit more affectionate with their sister.

My friendship connections over the past year and a half have seen the most change. I have made a number of new friends who have startled me with their intense and generous kindness. I know that some of them will come and go but I think that a good number of them will be lifelong friends. I have had old friendships that have evolved into something much deeper than they were in the past. But I have also experienced some lost friendships and some that have been made weaker by my cancer. This mixture of bitter and sweet, of gains and losses, is somewhat dizzying to a person like me who craves consistency and solidity. But I have learned to cope with chaos in my life. I want to be happy and I know chaos happens no matter what I do. So what is my choice other than to try to make peace with it, live along side of it, and accept that I sometimes lose my footing.

Finally, today I remind myself of my reconnection with nature. I spend time outside every day. I have been able to travel to the mountains and to the sea. I am outdoors during good weather and in bad. Even in the most exposed and vulnerable parts of nature, there is beauty. I feel a strong spiritual connection to everything when I walk. It is both intensely personal and beautifully communal.

That is today’s resolution. Tomorrow is a new day and a new year. I wish all of you good things in 2014: moments of joy, moments of peace, and fortitude among the suffering and chaos. Thank you for your connection and support. Xoxoxoxo.

Tags Breast Cancer, death, dying, Family, Friendship, grief, love, Marriage, New Year

Categories Breast cancer, Family, Feelings, Marriage, Mindfulness, Parenting

It’s hard to stop crying

December 30, 2013 //

I often read my old posts as a way to process my life experience. Today I was reflecting on the past year and I re-read my post, “No Words”. I can’t stop crying. I had a good day. But I read this post about the death my friend, Gina, and the tears just keep rolling. And I’m doing the “boo hoo hoo” loud kind of crying. John kept asking me what he could do for me and he finally just came into my office and gave me a big and welcome hug. I am not despondent. I am just sad that such a wonderful woman died suddenly and was not able to be there for the rest of her life or for the life of her son who was still an infant when she died.

I am not totally unselfish. I want to be there for my daughter. When I wrote this post, I was afraid that I would not be able to be there for her. This will always be a worry. At most times it will be so much more manageable. It will not elicit “boo hoo hoo” crying. But it will always be a worry. I am a strong woman with lots of support. How do people who are less strong and who have less support deal with this? How? Cancer sucks! People out there who have not dealt with this, you can tell me that I am a drama queen all you want. But I can tell you, as a strong and healthy person, having had a life threatening illness, one that can come back, and thinking about taking care of your child, WOW, CANCER SUCKS!.

You’d think that Gina had died of cancer. She didn’t. She had a brain aneurism and died in her 30s. I could go on about how unfair this was. But we are part of the natural world. It is not governed by justice or fairness. It is nature and some chaos is to be expected. But it still hurts and it hurts A LOT.

Every August, for the past several years, I get an unexpected wave of sadness. Then I remember that my friend, Gina died in the month of August. I can’t even remember how long ago; it must have been at least 15 years. Gina was just a beautiful person and friend. I met her in graduate school. I was in the clinical psychology program and she was in the counseling psychology program, which was housed in Education rather than in Arts & Sciences. We met through our mutual friends, Annette and Ellen, who are also now counseling psychologists. Gina had just returned from her clinical internship to finish her dissertation, her remaining Ph.D. requirement. She was also recently divorced.

Gina was so fun and such a kind-hearted person. After she graduated, she ended up taking a job at Duke University in onco-psychology. Yes, she worked with cancer patients. Gina used to talk about how happy John and I were together. “Elizabeth laughs when John tells stories you know that she’s heard a hundred times.” She and Annette were quite taken with John and referred to him as being the “most marriageable man” that they knew. Not that they thought he was available; they just thought he was well suited to marriage and were looking for someone like him. (And believe me, this is not the first time my girlfriends have talked about my husband this way to the point when my friend, Cheryl would even say, “I’ve got to get myself a computer nerd.” It was just fine.)

I suspect even more than being re-married, Gina wanted to be a mother. She eventually did marry her husband, Bob. We flew back to North Carolina for the wedding reception and John was the official photographer at the small family-only service at Coker Arboretum on the UNC campus. He took some really beautiful shots.

Gina did have a baby, a beautiful boy. We were so happy for her. A few months later, Annette called and I answered. “Gina died.” She’d had an brain aneurism and died while her husband was driving her to the hospital. There’s a boy in North Carolina who only knows the mother who waited for and wanted him so much through a video that Annette made. When she found out that Bob and Gina didn’t have a camcorder, she borrowed one and took footage.

I was wondering today why I was feeling her death again like the day Annette called. I looked down at my calendar. In fact I feel sadder than I have felt in many years. Today is August 8th. Today is the anniversary of my mastectomy. Today is a reminder of what I have lost and the greatest losses were not of my breast or my femininity, or my sense of self.

The loss I feel today is the loss of the ability to take for granted that I will be able to be alive for as long as my daughter needs me.

I have learned to be happy, to be appreciative, to have abundant and overwhelming joy in my life. But some days are just sad and that’s as it should be. In our sympathy card, I wrote to Bob, “So many words describe what Gina meant to us. No words describe our grief in losing her.”

Tomorrow is a new day. But today is the one I have right now.

There are no words.

Tags Breast Cancer, grief, Parenting

Categories Facts, Family, Feelings, Parenting

Breathing

December 9, 2013 //

I lost my shit with my kid. I have not done this is such a long time, honestly in years. I’m not sure why I did. She was treating my bedroom like it was hers and refused to leave when I politely requested that she do so. She had that look in her eyes of “make me.” I haven’t seen that look in a long time, in a couple of years, in fact.

It was like of flood of grief came over me, of fear and anger and loss. I yelled. I lost so much. It feels like I lost years of holding my breath, patience, and rebuilding trust with my family.

I messed up. I heard my daughter tell her father, “Mom is 48 years old. I am 15. She is acting like a child.”

And she was right. I had a tantrum. One I didn’t see coming in a million years. I saw the look of rebellion the look of “make me” in the eyes of my daughter.

I’ve been dealing with roils of anger lately. Anger that comes from past helplessness. And the look of “make me” was the look of cancer. Cancer entered my life without warning and without welcome. I have become more and more aware of the trauma it inflicted on me. No, it did not ruin my life but my life will never be the same. It will continue to take time to heal.

I confused my fear of having a life out of my control with the scared eyes of a 15 year old girl. I have apologized but I had already done much damage. My husband is also hurt and angry with me. I have been there. I have been at the spot of watching a spouse lose it and undo our progress as a family.

My daughter has also apologized and although that is mostly good, in a way I feel worse. Tomorrow is another day. But right now I feel very regretful and quite ashamed. I’m not a monster and neither is my child. Why did I just act like one?

I think this is the time in my grief when I need to address my anger. This has been a long time coming. I pray that I can do so without causing more damage.

Categories Family, Feelings

At the bottom of the pig pile

November 4, 2013 //

I have mentioned perhaps one or six hundred times that I have five brothers. One of my older brothers’ favorite “games” was pig pile. This involved announcing a victim and then having five siblings tackle and pile atop this person. For example the exclamation, “Pig pile on Liz!” was followed by my being tackled and piled on by five brothers, the oldest of whom was nearly 10 years my senior.

Pig piles seemed to be exclaimed on a very frequent basis and as the only girl of six children and the second to youngest it seemed that I was more often than not, the vortex to which the pile was attracted. A Bermuda Triangle of porcine piling, if you will. As the “baby” of the family, my brother James also spent a fair amount of time face planted on the living room floor beneath four sets of sprawling limbs shod in Converse low tops of various sizes.

Although our older brothers would admit to the pig piling, they would disagree with the metaphorical implications. They believed James and me to be spoiled. We avoided the horrors of ruler wielding nuns, whereas they all attended St. Anthony’s School, for example. Our family also had a little more money when I was growing up, not a lot more but just enough to fuel the “you’re spoiled” flames. I maintain that whatever advantages we may have had were more than offset by their mean older brother shenanigans.

James and I are only 18 months apart in age. Our next oldest sibling, John is 3 ½ years older than me and 3 ½ years younger than our next oldest brother, Mike. John was kind of caught between the “big boys” and the “little kids” of the family.

James and I spent a lot of time together. We played together a lot. We mostly got along very well though we could sometimes fight verbally and physically at which time my mom would yell, “I don’t care who started it. I’m finishing it. Go to your respective rooms!”

We played a combination of traditional boy and girl activities. We played with cars, trucks, and climbed trees. We designed obstacle courses in the yard and spent hours upon hours in the woods surrounding our house and neighborhood. We did not, however, play with Barbies or baby dolls. Remember, this was the late 60’s and early 70’s. My mom made us each two sets of Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls as well as a bunch of stuffed elephants. Due to her combination of genius and industry, we were able to play dramatic reenactments of family life with more socially acceptable dolls.

James was not really interested in formal music training, but he has an incredible ear and natural musical ability. He is also extremely funny. By the time I got to high school, I was pretty serious in my classical flute playing. He had a plastic slide whistle and would frequently copy whatever piece I was practicing in my room, complete with vibrato and when era appropriate, Baroque runs. When it wasn’t infuriating, it was hilarious.

These days my brother plays more music than me; he taught himself drums and plays with his 17 year-old son’s band. The only music we make together is the occasional game of Rock Band. The thread that carries over the years is that fact that my brother can always, I mean always, make me laugh.

He reminded me of this last Friday. James attended the requiem mass at St. James. I was kind of surprised to see him there since it was a pretty long drive for him and I think he hates to drive even more than I do. We got there an hour early to get a seat. During the time before the mass started, he was cracking me up and my laugh was echoing throughout the cathedral. When we were kids, due to different church rules, we were not allowed to talk before or obviously during mass. So with this as a back drop, his jokes have always been extra hilarious. I’d laugh, he’d say, “Now if any other family is coming tonight, they will be able to find us.” Then I laughed harder than before. Then he started singing family gossip in his version of Gregorian chant. I lost it again. Now here’s the thing about my brother. His antics are not particularly loud. He is actually a fairly introverted person whereas I am loud and gregarious. I believe he very much likes to set me up and watch the loud fireworks of my laughter, knowing that he is the one who lit the fuse.

James and I were successful for decades after our childhood in avoiding the bottom of the pig pile. Then I found out I had breast cancer and it wasn’t my older brothers that piled on top of me, it was the world in which I thought I had lived, that dissolved and crashed down on me. During the acute stage of my breast cancer treatment, there were many ongoing assessments and constant revisions of my treatment plan. When I was recuperating from surgery and bored, meaning prime time for worries to creep in, I called him, “James, I am bored. Tell me something funny.” And he did. And when I was anxious about waiting for the results of oncotype testing, which would determine whether my oncologist would recommend chemotherapy or not, I called my brother, “James, I have 20 minutes until I need to leave for my appointment. Can you tell me funny things and distract me?” And he did.

James does not show affection in traditional ways. I remember once, about ten years ago, his closing a telephone conversation by saying, “It was nice talking to you, Liz.” That was a major outpouring of verbal affection. But I know my brother loves me, thinks about me, and keeps the warmest wishes for my health. And he shows his love to me most consistently by making me laugh about today, laugh about cancer, and laugh about the things we did and experienced as kids.

For these things I will be ever grateful. James, you joined me at the bottom of the cancer pig pile. I can’t thank you enough for doing that. If you didn’t realize it before, please realize it now that you have helped me tremendously. Thank you for making me laugh at some of my lowest and scariest times. I love you a lot and I know you return that even when it may come in the guise of slide whistled Mozart.